What is the difference between VMWare VMNet0, VMNet1 and VMNet8 network connections?
VMWare allows user to connect to the virtual machine via 3 network connections technology, Bridged, NAT and Host-only.
Bridged network connection has the following features.
- Virtual machine IP address is in the same subnet as the host computer. For instance, if your host computer IP address is 192.168.8.123, then your virtual machine IP address would be 192.168.8.XXX.
- Virtual machine able to connect to the outside world. That is, you will be able to connect to Internet.
- Virtual machine able to connect to other computers in your LAN (local area network), like your desktop or a Raspberry PI.
- Unable to connect to your host computer. If you try pinging, your host computer from the virtual machine, you will not be able to.
- Bridged is also denoted as VMNet0 in VMWare.
NAT (Network Address Translation)
- Virtual machine will be assigned the subnet that VMNet8 is in. You can find out the VMNet8 subnet by opening the command prompt on your host computer and entering ipconfig command. See screenshot below.
- Virtual machine able to connect to the outside world. That is, you will be able to connect to Internet.
- Virtual machine not able to connect to other computers in your LAN (local area network), like your desktop or a Raspberry PI.
- Virtual machine able to connect the virtual machine to your host computer.
- With NAT, you will be able to send packets to the outside world (into the Internet) but not able to receive any packets back into the virtual machine. ICCP and HTTP packets are exceptions.
- NET is also denoted as VMNet8 in VMWare.
Host-only
- Virtual machine will be assigned the subnet that VMNet1 is in. You can find out the VMNet1 subnet by opening the command prompt on your host computer and entering ipconfig command. See screenshot below.
- Virtual machine not able to connect to the outside world. That is, you will be able to connect to Internet.
- Virtual machine not able to connect to other computers in your LAN (local area network), like your desktop or a Raspberry PI.
- Virtual machine able to connect the virtual machine to your host computer.
- NET is also denoted as VMNet1 in VMWare.
To change the network connection type, these are the steps. Note that network connection type cannot be changed while the virtual machine is not running.
1) Run your virtual machine.
2) Select Removable Devices — Network Adapter — Settings. Note that you need to select the active network adapter; whatever that Network Adapter that has a blue check mark. FI you have 2 blue check mark, select either.
3) From the Virtual Machine Setting popup window, make sure you have selected Network Adapter. From there you will be able to change your network connection type.
What is a NAT?
Network address translation (NAT) is a technique where mapping of an IP address into another by modifying network address information in the IP header of packets while the message is transmitted across a traffic routing device like a router.
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